Prime Crime Holiday Bundle

by Cleo Coyle; Emily Brightwell; Kenneth Blanchard

  “He admitted he’d gambled away all the investors’ money. All his supposed business trips to Vegas weren’t to see clients. He kept thinking he’d win it back.” She looked disgusted. “Like that ever happens.”

  Someone had complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bradley knew that once they looked at his books, they’d figure out what he’d done. “He said he wasn’t going to go to prison,” she said. He told her the fake suicide had been a hasty plan. Mason and I had been right. Bradley had put a newly purchased motorcycle in the back of the SUV. He parked the Suburban in the Long Beach Terminal parking lot and put the motorcycle in the spot next to it. He used a credit card to buy a one-way ticket on the Catalina Express. Midway on the trip he planted his wallet and cell phone on a bench. It’s a slow time of year and there were plenty of empty spots on the boat so nobody noticed what he did. Just before the boat reached Catalina, he alerted a crew member about the wallet and phone. “I didn’t recognize him in the crowd getting off the boat because he put on a thick coat and a baseball cap,” Emily said.

  She explained that he’d merely bought a return ticket with cash, gone back to Long Beach and left on the motorcycle. He’d dropped the suicide letter in the mail. His plan was to ride across the border into Mexico and disappear. “He said it was better for me if I thought he was dead.”

  “Why’d he come back?” I asked.

  “It was for his watch and the afghan. With all that he’d done, who would figure that he was sentimental. He said it wasn’t about the value of the Rolex Bond watch, but because his father had given it to him. His sister had made the afghan for him. I didn’t have either. The watch was still at the shop for cleaning and I had given you the afghan. He insisted he had to have them. He had kept some traveling money and if I could get those items for him, he’d share some of the money.” Emily tried to read my face to see if I was judging her. “I was up against a wall. Everything was frozen or canceled. I have children,” she wailed. Getting the watch had been no problem, but after telling me that she didn’t like the afghan and never wanted to see it again, she thought it would look suspicious if she asked for it back. Since she just thought he wanted it as something from his sister, she had asked her to make another one for Bradley. There wasn’t a lot of time and Madison had whipped up something on a big hook with bulky yarn.

  By now Madison knew what her brother had done, but when she heard how he felt about the afghan, she wanted to see him one last time.

  Emily detailed the convoluted plan to meet Bradley, and how she’d given him the two items. I asked why she didn’t turn him in.

  “He was my husband and I loved him,” she said as if it was an of course. “Bradley assured me that once they got investigating they’d realize I had nothing to do with any of it and leave me alone.”

  Then everything had gotten weird. “He hadn’t looked at the afghan until after we left. He called and yelled that he didn’t just want an afghan his sister made, he had to have the original one. I told him it was gone and I couldn’t get it. But he kept calling me and started offering more and more money for it and I was feeling desperate.”

  I was feeling a little desperate myself. It had been my experience that when people did a whole lot of confessing like this, they planned to kill you. I clutched the broom tighter, ready to start swatting.

  She kept on talking, describing how she and Bradley used to walk in the mountains and he’d arranged for them to meet at a familiar spot. He’d checked the afghan that time, and when it was the right one, he’d handed over the promised money. She slouched in despair. “That police detective kept hammering away at me. ‘You’ll feel better if you tell the truth. Just tell me what happened and we can work something out.’ On and on,” Emily said, getting agitated. She walked to the counter. I knew what was coming next. Any second she’d start telling me she had killed Bradley and all the reasons why. Then she’d say she was really sorry, but now that I knew, she’d have to get rid of me, and she’d grab one of my knives and stab me. But I was ready for her. I’d clock her with the broom as soon as her hand even got near a knife.

  She was looking down at the counter and I had come up behind her and raised the broom, ready to strike. The back door made a noise as it opened and Emily turned toward it just as Mason came in, fussing about me not returning calls. She took in my raised broom and her mouth fell open. “Are you crazy?” she yelled as she pushed past me and Mason and took off without a word. She rushed across the yard, jumped on the bench and launched herself over the fence.

  “Was it something I said?” Mason said, deadpan.

  I didn’t react to Mason’s comment. I was a little zoned out by what had just happened. I’d been so geared up for Emily to make a move, it seemed anticlimactic that she’d run off. Finally Mason waved his hand in front of my face to get my attention and asked what had just happened.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I started to tell him everything about Bradley from the beginning, but he already knew.

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Greenberg got in touch with me. He was worried you might need a lawyer. Something about you being found hovering over Perkins’ body, covered in his blood. I left you a bunch of messages.” I still had the broom poised for action and Mason took it out of my hands and put it in the corner.

  “Detective Heather said I was a person of interest, but I think that was just to bug me. She seems to have focused on Emily being the killer.” I shuddered when I said that, thinking she’d been in my kitchen with close access to knives a few minutes ago. Still there was something that didn’t seem right. I’d noticed it when she was running across my yard. I mentioned to Mason that she had on the same clothes she had on in the photos. “If she’d stabbed Bradley, you’d think she would have gotten blood on her clothes or been worried that she had and she would have changed them,” I said.

  “It’s too bad the detective didn’t arrest her,” Mason said, glancing out the window toward the fence. “I don’t like leaving you here. Come to my place.” When I looked askance, he quickly added there was no hidden agenda in his offer.

  I assured him I’d be okay, though I still startled when I heard a key in the front door lock. Samuel came into the kitchen a moment later. He’d been picking up a lot of work at holiday parties and I’d barely seen him even though we were sharing the same roof. He nodded at Mason and asked why there was a media frenzy going on out front. I was glad to let Mason tell the story since I’d repeated it so many times. Samuel’s eyes widened at what he was hearing and then he seemed upset.

  “Mother, are you nuts?” Samuel said, before launching into a lecture about me staying out of trouble. Mason offered to stay, but Samuel said it wasn’t necessary. Nobody listened to me when I said I thought I might have been wrong about Emily’s intent, now that I’d realized the thing about her clothes.

  “Please take care of your mother,” Mason said. “And for God’s sake, Molly, keep your doors locked.”

  After all that had happened, I expected to have a hard time sleeping but surprised myself by falling into a deep sleep. True I had a lot of strange dreams, but by morning I felt normal. It was a little creepy at how well I was adjusting to finding dead bodies and possibly being threatened by neighbors.

  Even with the holidays, the Hookers had decided to keep our regular crochet sessions. After everything with Bradley, the cops and Emily, I really needed a little crochet and talk time right now.

  Most of the group was already assembled at the table when I got to the bookstore. I almost laughed when I got toward the back and saw what everyone was working on. Adele, CeeCee, Sheila, Eduardo and even Rhoda were making vampire scarves. Elise had returned to the group and was displaying her finished scarf on the table. I picked it up and looked it over. I had to give her credit, everything about it did say vampire.

  Dinah came in from the café with the kids in tow. When they got to the table, Ashley-Angela and E. Conner sat down near Adele. In keeping with her se
asonal attire, Adele had worn the sweater with all the holiday symbols hanging off. The kids were as entranced this time as when they’d seen it first in the car. I was afraid of a scene and went to move them away from her before they started touching the sweater and she went berserk. I wasn’t fast enough and Ashley-Angela touched the dreidel near Adele’s shoulder.

  “We’re making our own dreidels,” the little girl said. “Only ours are going to have glitter.”

  Adele twisted her head to see what Ashley-Angela was looking at. “I bet yours aren’t crocheted,” Adele said.

  The little girl shook her head so her curls bobbled around. “I don’t know how to crochet. Aunt Dinah said she’ll teach me someday. I don’t know when someday is.”

  Adele did one of her grand gestures and threw her head back in disbelief at the comment.

  She pulled out a hook and some cotton yarn from her bag and offered it to Ashley-Angela, along with a lesson on how to crochet. Okay, the rest of the table was all watching with their mouths open. Adele never ceased to surprise. E. Conner watched for a while then pulled out the coloring he’d brought along.

  I took out the owl head and glanced at the pattern. I picked up some black yarn with a sparkle in it and connected it to the finished head and began to work on the body.

  When Elise looked up, I gave her a reassuring nod. I was glad she had rejoined the group.

  “What’s with this neighbor of yours, Bradley Perkins? He’s dead, he’s not dead, he’s really dead,” Rhoda said to me. “I saw on the news they found his body up in the mountains. I think even that Kimberly Wang Diaz called it a strange case with twists and turns.” Elise looked up at the comment. Her face seemed to tighten and she glanced around to see if anyone was staring at her.

  “They’re saying his wife did it,” Rhoda continued. “You know her, don’t you, Molly?”

  I nodded in acknowledgment and then explained why I wasn’t so sure she’d done it. All eyes were on me, particularly Dinah’s. Adele stopped with her lesson and got in the middle of the conversation.

  “Okay, Sherlock Fletcher, then who did it?” Adele informed the table that Dinah and I had been following Emily when she went to meet her husband.

  CeeCee seemed troubled. “Why were you following her?”

  “You certainly get in the middle of things, Molly,” Eduardo said.

  It was obvious at this point that there was a gap in information. If we were going to talk about it, it made no sense not to share the whole story so we’d all be on the same page.

  “Good for you for trying to trap him,” Elise said when I’d gotten to the end.

  “It’s kind of beside the point now,” CeeCee said. “The man’s dead.”

  “Maybe somebody else saw Emily coming out of Luxe and followed her, too,” Sheila said.

  “Yeah, like Nicholas. It’s his store so he must have known what she was doing,” Rhoda offered.

  “Nicholas wouldn’t do anything like kill somebody,” Sheila said. Her comment got everyone’s attention.

  “I didn’t know you were so chummy with him, dear,” CeeCee said.

  Sheila stumbled over her words. She wasn’t chummy with him, but she’d been selling her blankets and other accessories in his store for a while and she thought that gave her some insight into him.

  “Nicholas lost some money with the Perkins guy?” Eduardo said.

  I said he appeared not to be that upset by it, but several other people threw out comments that it might have been an act. “Someone could have overheard me,” I said. “The bookstore was crowded. I thought I kept my voice down, but who knows?”

  “What did the person on the mountain bike look like, Pink? Isn’t that the most obvious question?” Adele said.

  “We didn’t get a good look. Whoever it was flew past us,” Dinah said, finally joining in. “They flew past Emily, too.”

  Rhoda threw out a question about the bike. Did we know what it looked like or at least what color it was? Both Dinah and I had noticed only that it had wheels.

  “If you want to know about mountain bikes, you can ask Logan. He knows all about them. He goes riding up in the mountains all the time,” Elise said. She didn’t seem to have any sense about what she’d just said. Everyone focused on her and I knew what they were thinking. If you wanted a suspect, Logan was a good choice. He’d lost money, his reputation and probably a lot of his real estate business. The implication of what she’d said finally sunk in and Elise looked horrified. “It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t do anything like that. Besides, he was ...” Her voice trailed off and then she muttered something about her being at Christmas bazaar all afternoon. She cut herself off abruptly.

  Suddenly the big question was where had Logan been yesterday afternoon?

  CHAPTER 23

  DINAH AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT; AS soon as the group broke up, we checked the bookstore café for Logan. When he wasn’t there, we headed to Le Grande Fromage. Though I wondered if Logan would still be using a table as his portable office. Those two men had been pretty hostile to him and I was sure there must be others just as angry. I wanted to get there quickly, before Elise warned him to come up with an alibi. She’d rushed off to a hair appointment, so there was a chance she hadn’t talked to him.

  The sun was burning off the clouds and shining in the window of the French café. The fragrant wreath wrapped in tiny white lights made it seem festive. The lunch crowd was clogging the place and the line at the counter went all the way to the back of the restaurant and blocked my view of the tables.

  Dinah was trying to keep the kids from getting jostled by the crowd. Finally the line moved up and I got a clear view of the area where Logan always sat. To my surprise it appeared to be business as usual for him. He had his laptop on the table and seemed to be reading something. I pulled Dinah and the kids with me and we made our way across the small restaurant.

  “Mind if we join you?” I said, pulling out a chair. Logan did a double take as his empty table suddenly filled up. He stammered something about expecting someone, but I countered by saying we’d leave when they showed up. Dinah went to join the line to get food and the kids and I stayed behind. I made some small talk about the weather and the book launch party. It was to soften him up before I started asking the real questions and it was a stall while I tried to figure out exactly how to put it. I couldn’t very well just ask him where he’d been the afternoon before. I kept looking at him, trying to picture him on a bike with a helmet to see if it matched my slip of a memory. If only the rider hadn’t been wearing a helmet, I would have recognized Logan’s odd hairline if it had gone past.

  One of the things Dinah had done was teach the kids how to take part in the conversation. Ashley-Angela pulled out the little crochet swatch Adele had taught her to make and showed it to Logan. The kids might have been accustomed to being included with adults, but Logan didn’t seem to feel the same about kids. He blew out his breath a few times and I knew he was wishing we’d leave.

  “I have a bike, too,” E. Conner said. Logan didn’t seem to be listening, and I suddenly realized the kids were like loose cannons. Dinah was coming back with a tray of drinks and I was trying to get up from the table and take the kids. “What’s an alibi?” E. Conner said. I turned to Logan, hoping he was still tuning out as I tried to grab the kids and make a fast exit. “I can get up myself, Aunt Molly. That’s what Aunt Molly wanted to know if you had in case you were the one who killed that man on the mountain,” E. Conner continued.

  Let’s just say we didn’t have to leave the table. Logan grabbed his stuff and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair and was out the door before Dinah even arrived with the drinks.

  “Did I miss something?” she said, looking at the empty chair.

  Dinah apologized for the kids a bunch of times and I told her not to worry. We’d just have to come up with another way to figure out if Logan was the killer. In the meantime, why not branch out and check up on the other list of possi
bles. I gestured toward Luxe, but Dinah looked at the kids. “After what just happened maybe you’d rather go alone,” Dinah said.

  I wasn’t worried since we hadn’t said anything about Nicholas being the possible murderer in front of them; besides, they were good cover. Who would think we were investigating anything with a couple of kids in tow? There were a few customers in Luxe and I noticed that Nicholas had some additional sales help. “He could have left the store and followed Emily,” I said in a low voice.

  A smile lit up Nicholas’s dark eyes as he came over to us. He pointed the kids to a low table with drawing supplies and cookies. Dinah seemed relieved to get the kids out of the way before they could say anything. “What can I show you, ladies?” he said. “Christmas is just around the corner and so is Hanukkah. Books are nice, but so is a silver bowl.”

  Nobody could say I didn’t think fast on my feet. “Well, actually I was looking for some accessories for a mountain bike. I don’t know anything about them, so I’m not sure what kind of accessories there are.”

  Nicholas seemed surprised. “The only accessory I can offer is a weatherproof jacket.” He took us over to a rack on the wall and pulled out a forest green one. “I think you’d be better off at a sporting goods store,” he said. Dinah gave me a tiny nod of approval as she saw what I was doing.

  “Do you know anything about mountain bikes? I realize you might not have anything here, but maybe you could give me an idea of what to look for when I go to a sporting goods store.”

  “A bike store would be even better,” he said. “I have a mountain bike, but I’m not really an expert in the accessory department.” I tried to hide my excitement.

  “Really. Do you ride a lot?” I said, feigning polite interest.

  He gave me a quizzical look. “Frankly, I don’t use it very often. I didn’t know you were so interested in bicycling.” The door opened and Eduardo walked in. He nodded in greeting to Dinah and me, and then gestured to Nicholas and headed to the back of the store. “If you need any other help, just talk to one of my assistants,” Nicholas said, walking away from us.